On its 50th birthday, don't underestimate the humble microchip

Detecting the movement of animalsAlan
Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College has been using a range
of different sensors to analyse how animals move. He has worked
with a range of humans and animals including horses, greyhounds,
ostriches, camels and pigeons.

He and his team use high-accuracy GPS units that can locate
within centimetres rather than metres as well as MEMS
accelerometers and gyroscopes. They have examined the impact of
jockey positioning on a horse's gait, how biomechanical design
limits athletic performance, muscle-tendon interaction and flocking
behaviour.

Wilson told Wired.co.uk: "When I did a PhD, accelerometers cost £2,000 and
weren't very robust. Now you can buy one for $10 and they are
smaller, lighter and can be deployed in more places."

The team has just finished work on a project called CARDyAL
(Cooperative Aerodynamics and Radio-based Animal Localisation)
which attached lightweight sensing devices to try and understand
the dynamics of groups of animals for the purposes of conservation,
ecology, welfare of epidemiology. The project has seen the team rig
up sheep, wild dogs and cheetahs to sensors.

A second major project has looked at the performance of athletes
in competition. SESAME (SEnsing
for Sport And Managed Exercise) aims to help athletes and coaches
improve performance by using wearable sensors to analyse
performance data, such as posture, position and muscular
response.

Monitoring the world's oceansHywel
Morgan is a professor of Bioelectronics at the University of
Southampton. He's been developing a sensor system that is the same
size as a USB stick and which can measure a number of different
characteristics of the "notoriously under-sampled" sea, including
temperature, salinity, oxygen levels and depth. When studying the
oceans, you need to be able to measure temperature to within one
thousandth of a degree. There are other systems available that can measure these different
qualities, but they're large and unwieldy, and can cost up to
£30,000.

Morgan told Wired.co.uk: "The main challenge was getting the
level of stability and accuracy as the big sensors at a cost of
hundreds of pounds rather than tens of thousands of pounds."

The sensor head was made of glass that has platinum
microelectrodes in patterns on both sides. This is accompanied by
16-bit electronics that can deliver stable results for over a
year.

The sensors were tested during a research cruise on the RRS
Discovery to the Canary Islands and could potentially have
applications in agriculture, fisheries and subterranean water
supply. The next generation of sensors will be able to measure
nitrates, phosphates, inorganic nutrients and hydrocarbons to allow
for richer analysis of the world's oceans.